EFF – De Klerk showed SA the middle finger

Party attacks former president on apartheid stance

EFF leader Julius Malema yesterday defended calls for former president FW de Klerk not to be at Parliament, saying he had shown South Africans the middle finger and revealed he had no regrets about apartheid.

Malema said De Klerk undermined President Cyril Ramaphosa, describing him as De Klerk’s “ice boy”.

“Our actions (on Thursday) were provoked by him saying (in a recent SABC interview) that apartheid was not a crime against humanity. To us he does not have regrets. Now he has got his Ice Boy as a president and thinks he can undermine us because he controls Cyril,” he said at the Press Club in Cape Town.

Malema said Ramaphosa and De Klerk had a relationship dating back to the 1970s.

“We are not to allow Cyril’s proximity to them to allow them to undermine us. He can see there is no leadership in this country. It’s his boys.”

He said De Klerk had not made the same claims during the era of former presidents Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma because “he has no files on them”.

“He has never managed them” like they managed Ramaphosa, and had no respect for him.

Hours after Malema’s address, the FW de Klerk Foundation issued a statement saying it was ironic that Malema had launched a vitriolic attack on the former president.

“In a way, an attack by Julius Malema and the EFF is the sincerest form of compliment. We have seen this kind before,” the foundation said.

“Those who wear colour-coded uniforms, who use bully-boy tactics to disrupt democratic processes, who whip up race hatred and call their leaders ‘Fuhrer or Duce or Commander in Chief’.”

Malema also said nothing new had come out of Ramaphosa’s State of the Nation Address.

“We continued to hear his dreams of building a new city, even though today he is the same man selling our independence and state entities, surrendering all capacity to capital...

“The state will now allow our municipalities to enter into exploitative contracts with independent power producers, and more of these contracts which have seen Eskom operate at a loss for the benefit of Cyril and Pravin’s friends will be signed.

“A strategic entity that is supposed to drive development is now going to the hands of greedy capitalists, who have no obligation to provide affordable electricity to our people, even in the most remote areas.”

Malema charged that Ramaphosa’s only solution to the collapse of SOEs was a misplaced faith in the private sector.

He also said Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan was at the centre of the collapse of SOEs and capture of the country by white monopoly capital.

“It is for this reason that we want him gone. We are a country living in darkness because of Pravin Gordhan,” Malema said.

He said the removal of Gordhan was the first step in saving the SOEs.

“This must be followed by appointing of a competent board with skills from various sectors that relate to energy, and the scrapping of IPP (independent power producer) contracts, which are looting of our coffers.”

Malema told his audience the EFF were shocked that the media and NGOs had taken an anti-accountability and -transparency stance because of the factional interests of those who funded and controlled them.

He questioned the sealing of financial statements for the CR17 campaign and the dropping of charges against those perceived to be members of the so-called rogue unit.

He said the EFF had asked Pretoria High Court Deputy Judge President Aubrey Ledwaba to open documents on Ramaphosa up for public scrutiny.